Chapter One
Lexi
The smell of betrayal hit first.
Chocolate cake doesn’t usually have a scent, but hints of cinnamon and nutmeg wafted through the kitchen from this one. I stealthily padded into the room, dressed in an old sweatshirt, pajama pants, and fuzzy socks. My long brown hair hung in a messy ponytail, and a pair of my blue-lens computer glasses hung from the front of the sweatshirt.
My name is Lexi Carmichael, and I’m a geek girl, white-hat hacker, and newlywed. Thankfully, none of them are mutually exclusive. I work for a cyberintelligence company called X-Corp in Crystal City, Virginia, helping clients with their cybersecurity issues and information assurance and protection.
Six months into marriage, my husband, Slash, and I were finally starting to resemble something like a normal couple again—at least on the surface. The paparazzi frenzy that followed our wedding had mostly died down. Mostly.
There was still this one guy who refused to give up, sort of the human equivalent of a malware process that wouldn’t terminate. Slash had long since addressed that problem by quietly dropping a tracker on the man’s car and piping it into an app we affectionately called the Paparazzi Scope, or the Pap App for short. Then we could know where he was at any given time, making our lives significantly easier. Still, the thought of him tailing me to Atlantic City later this weekend made my shoulders tense.
Anyway, minutes earlier, I’d been minding my own business, completely in the zone while working on a difficult project in our home office, when I decided I needed a snack. When I arrived in the kitchen, Slash was already there. Six foot two of muscle, gorgeous black hair, and Italian ancestry.
But right now, all I saw was his butt, because his head was stuck in the fridge.
“Hey, are you eating the last piece of cake?” I asked as my eyes narrowed.
Slash startled at my words, clearly exhibiting guilty behavior, then glanced at me over his shoulder. He was mid-bite, his fork hovering over what little was left of a piece of cake, chocolate frosting on his lips.
“Technically, I’m safeguarding the dessert,” he said, straightening and backing out of the fridge.
As the director of the Information Assurance Department at the National Security Agency, or NSA, he probably felt justified in saying that. But I wasn’t buying it.
“Safeguarding chocolate cake?” I exclaimed. “From whom?”
“You,” he said. He bumped the refrigerator door with his hip, closing it, and leaned back against the counter. His eyes gleamed as he raised one of his ridiculously perfect eyebrows. But he did not let go of his plate, nor what was left of the last piece of chocolate cake.
“That was my piece.” I pointed at the plate accusingly. “How could you? You knew what that meant to me. Cake is the structural foundation of my post-wedding stress management.”
He licked his lips slowly. “I’m sorry, cara. It’s been months since the wedding. And, in my defense, you said you were on a diet, so I handled the temptation for you. I thought you’d thank me.”
“I never said I was on a diet,” I clarified. “I said I was watching what I ate. And I wanted to watch that piece of cake while I ate it.”
“Oops,” he said, and then had the audacity to spear the last bite of cake and offer it innocently to me. When I glared, he popped it into his mouth instead, chewing slowly. No remorse. None whatsoever.
“I’m adding this to the marriage rules,” I said, pulling out my phone and swiping to my notes app. “There will be no eating the last piece of cake without determining ownership. Legally. In writing.” I pointed at the fridge like it had betrayed me. “Now what am I supposed to do when I lapse into a hunger-fueled spiral at 3:00 a.m. tonight?”
“Wake me up?” he suggested with a smile. “I promise to make it up to you.”
He chuckled as I glared at him. Then he went to the sink to rinse his plate. So, this was marriage? Six months in and it was already rife with pastry betrayal.
My gaze drifted to the kitchen window, the November sunlight filtering through orange maple leaves. I couldn’t stay mad at him. The seasons were changing and so were we. Being married meant learning new rules, renegotiating boundaries, and occasionally installing tracking software on paparazzi.
I’d created a spreadsheet of marriage rules and responses that was a living, working document and offered us guidelines as we traversed uncharted territory. I think it helped me more than Slash, but he respected and abided by it. In his defense, the cake thing wasn’t on the spreadsheet. While it wasn’t explicitly stated in the marriage spreadsheet, it should have been implicitly understood that you don’t eat the last piece of cake without permission. Apparently, I needed to develop some clarity on implicit rules, if that was possible.
Right now, the spreadsheet included everyday tasks like cleaning, cooking, compromising, and helping keep sane one of my best friends, Elvis Zimmerman, while his fiancée, Gwen Sinclair, got all wound up over their wedding planning. Having just gotten married myself, dodging anything to do with wedding planning was extremely high on my to-do list. But somehow, I still had to participate in various social engagements with friends and family while managing expectations and friendships and not spiral out of control.
Slash crossed the room and tugged on my hips, pulling me closer. He leaned in for a kiss. Chocolate lingered on his breath. “I sincerely apologize for eating the last piece of cake, cara, and sending you into a potential 3:00 a.m. spiral,” he murmured.
“Not the last piece, but my piece,” I grumbled.
“Your piece,” he amended. “Forgive me?”
“Maybe.” I slid my arms around his neck. “But speaking of spirals, Gwen called. Again.”
A rumble of laughter sounded in his chest. “Let me guess. She either wants you to be a bridesmaid, officiate the ceremony, or optimize the seating chart algorithm.”
